This is Part 2, continued from Part 1 in the previous post.

Leaving time for the wagon trail was keyed to practicality: grass. Horses could bite short grass; cows and oxen could not. Horses eat by wrapping their tongues around longer grass. Journal entries spoke often of plants and grasses, which are remarkable considering they were seeing many new plants daily. The “tall grass prairies” had more feed than the “short grass prairies.” Many wagon trains began with a high number of wagons but this number was reduced enroute simply due to the available grass factor for the animals. 

Pat Packard said she’d never found mention of their finding, picking and then cooking any kind of greens along the route. She did find mention of fruit (in late summer) such as chockcherries and currants. While the adults avoided unknown berries when they saw the red-berry smears on the faces and fingers of their children, they realized that berries weren’t poisonous. Packard did mention the finding of wild onions, at least on the plains, but not in the far west. Fear of “death camas” was real and the pioneers hadn’t the knowledge to see the difference between wild onion and death camas. Cactus was mentioned as bein new and so pretty but not to eat….and stepping on them was rarely mentioned. 

On they they learned to make was “mincemeat” most likely of berries and chopped buffalo meat. This was a pemmican-like product that they learned about from the Indians. 

By the time they reached the Rocky Mountains, they were hungry for fresh greens but none was to be had. They were still somewhat fearful of unknown berries and then they encountered the huckleberry! Again, their unafraid children showed them the way. By the time they reached the Rocky Mountains signs of scurvy were really showing up. The “bloom” of the trip had definitely worn off and also by this point “pretty plants” were seldom mentioned in the journals.

Also by this time the grain was gone as was the wild-grass-seed-grass so the horses were really in a bad way. This ongoing problem of feeding the animals dictated every decision made along the trail. Sometimes this led to making river crossings at dangerous fords (like the second crossing of the Snake in southern Idaho). They also had found that in the deserts of the West, everything “sticks, stings or stinks.” Ms. Packard got a big laugh at that one. 

In 1852, some 72,000 people crossed the plains in more than 20,000 wagons. Imagine: 20,000 times four oxen or horses is a huge animal population needing feeding and leaving dung everywhere. No wonder the trail spread out with all those animals…and dust…. ahead of you. And remember that likely the children walked barefoot. 

Ms. Packard also explained the physiology of why plants affected horses and oxen differently. Horses take the food straight down into their stomach, where any in-plant poisons could immediately affect the animal. Oxen would take the food down into their “holding tank” stomach where the poisons could be neutralized before the food passed into the digestive stomach. 

TO BE CONTINUED…………………